Test 4 second verse: same as the first

Well I take everything back about self-administered haircuts, because Mitchell Johnson's once-over with the clippers on the No. 2 setting seems to have worked a treat (a reverse Samsonism that indeed was always a favoured explanation of Warney's success with the ball once he lost the mullet).

And I very much enjoyed the starlet-on-the-red-carpet-back-over-the-shoulder-look he threw Collingwood after he bounced him: très femme fatale. A varation actually on the steaminess he created with Stuart Broad on Day 4 at Edgbaston.

Not that I saw this live. Another of my favourite books when I was little was Marion Holland's A Big Ball of String. A boy collects pieces of string into a Big Ball and then, when he is confined to bed with a cold, sets himself up so he can basically run the world from his bed by pulling on bits of string:
It probably says a lot about me that as an idea of a Good Time—or Dream Lifestyle—this still strikes me as just about unbeatable.

Anyway, I mention it because as the English prepared for their 2nd innings I hauled the smaller TV into the bedroom and set myself up in bed with extra pillows, laptop, weekend newspaper, pen and notebook and… fell asleep almost immediately. Lizard brain prodded me awake to see Mitchell Johnson being an aeroplane and England on 5/78. Well, now you're just spoiling me.

I greet the haunted look of the crumbly English cricketer like an old friend of course. As mentioned in relation to Captain Nasser, there's something about loss—especially of the gasp-makingly embarassing sort—that suits the English like a comfy pair of corduroy slippers and a smelly old dressing-gown they really ought to chuck into the fireplace but can't quite let go of.

Personally, I feel "Burn the smelly dressing gown" represents an improvement on the desperately vague homilies the English were getting from other sources:

Bowling coach Ottis Gibson: "Stand up as Men."
Everyone's coach Greg Matthews:
1. "Stand up."
2. "Have a look at the badge on your shirts."
3. "Get into it."

(I do love it though when Greg puts on his glasses, a thought Stuart MacGill echoed last night: he is transformed in the most unlikely fashion from haggard old ocker into the local pastor or headmaster.)

Test 2 Day 1 Mutter

I struggled to get into the game yesterday evening, what with the comparative excitement of Masterchef and some work distractions, but those aside, could we have lacked any more lustre in that opening session?

Even after we got a couple of wickets, by 1am I was just feeling a bit tired, cold, cranky and ready for bed, but then I came back from cleaning my teeth and found Pietersen walking and it perked me up considerably. Out came the extra cardie and hot cup of tea and I saw it through to stumps while tapping away at a less demanding job on the laptop.

Some things anyway...

New ways to get batsmen out

1. Nathan Hauritz
I could swear I heard Phil Tufnell on the radio say that rather than create drama à la Warne, Hauritz tries to "bore" the batsman out...

Jim Maxwell called Hauritz's bowling style "polite", which I think is probably his polite way of saying "like a big girl's blouse", but hey, Stuart Broad looks like a member of Hanson (ner), and if death by politeness works, it works:

Hauritz (in high voice): "Please sir, would you be so kind as to give me your wicket?"
English batsman (without thinking): "Why of course, little girl, here you... arrrgghh"

2. Mitchell Johnson
I think Warney was up to his old bamboozling of Englishmen when he tried to put the idea to his commentary box colleagues that Johnson's "spraying them all over the place" could be a cover for smuggling in a "jaffa" (or a "peach"), even asking Mike Atherton whether he had ever confronted such a "strategy" during his career, and how he "coped". Poor Johnson. It was so unexpected when he finally got a wicket that when I looked up from the computer at the noise and saw Johnson's jubilation I thought I was watching a montage of "Mitchell Johnson's past glories" rather than something happening live. Has he caught "star fast bowler" curse from Brett Lee?

Cricket Love

1. You could hear the hum of mutual affection between Henry Blofeld and Phil Tufnell on the radio together, their different styles of Englishness (posh/cockney) reverberating nicely. I could imagine the Disney animated feature with them silhouetted against the sunset, Bloers a preposterous cravat-wearing turkey and Tufnell a sly streetwise rat.

2. Warney really purred in the BBC commentary box when he was asked how he felt about Nasser Hussain, sitting next to him: "I love Nasser", he said, "I loved playing with Nasser."

I think Warney probably loves Nasser for much the same reason I love Nasser: because his manifest pain was SO MUCH FUN when he led England on a really wretched Australian tour. I saw them play a one-day game at the SCG where they made all of 112 in their innings, and then Gilchrist and Langer (or Martyn?) came out and smashed so many fours and sixes the crowd started to cheer when they didn't get a boundary.* And the scoreboard kept showing close-ups of Nasser's face as his eyes followed the high, long, trajectory of yet another ball going over the ropes. He did that English-cricket-captain combination of wincing agony and gloomed resignation very well. And literal resignation I think following that tour.

He's also in one of the only pictures in my "cricket love" collection that isn't of the Australian team:


This is Nasser and Andy Caddick, and I should have made a note of exactly what the occasion was, but it was from the "wretched" tour (2001-2?) and may have been from the dead rubber Sydney match that England won.

It was a treat in any case having Warney commentating, even though someone has left the liquid paper within his reach and he has gone and painted his teeth.


*[England's total actually 117, and it was Gilchrist and Hayden batting, but 76 runs of their winning total of 118 was made in boundaries, including 15 from Gilchrist]